There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things - like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective. A recurring point is that most people simply cannot fathom the amount of money he has. The number is $150 billion. My favorite attempt to bring the number into human terms is Quartz’s article, “The average US worker would need 10 times the length of all human history to earn as much as Jeff Bezos”. This beautifully captures the point that someone does not simply earn or work for such an amount of money, but rather captures it. We, at degrowth.info, thought a similar calculation would be interesting. We wanted to know how many humble (but hopefully useful) projects like ours Jeff Bezos’ wealth could pay for. In case you haven’t heard already, degrowth.info is improving its site to better support the degrowth community and improve the usability of the platform – this will cost 7,500€.
Reflections on organising next year's degrowth conference, which will explore strategies for social and ecological transformation. I headed to Barcelona last year with a friend to attend the two week degrowth summer school, a rite of passage in the degrowth community. It takes place at the intellectual center of degrowth, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and at a degrowt...
Call for participation On 7 and 8 July 2017, the Leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) will meet in Hamburg. This self-styled club of 19 of the most powerful economies in the world and the EU claims to fight global crises. However, reality reveals a different picture: The G20 defends a system that exacerbates social disparities instead of leading policies against deprivation and hunger and...
It is great to see an attempt to put degrowth ideas into a straightforward form that can be taken into political debate. However, the selection of points is critical and I am not convinced that this is the right selection. I'll just take issue with two: 1. Zero bank-debts “No bank should lend more than its deposits. Banks cannot be allowed to create money out of thin air, while all the ...
